Mobile tech bungle hits sour note with SA Idols fans

South African pay channel broadcaster, MNET, has announced that the fifth season of its South African version of the popular Idols franchise, would have “joint” winners.

This comes after many viewer complaints highlighted problems with the sms voting system.

On Sunday (03 May 2009) it was announced that Capetonian Sasha Lee Davids had won the competition, but a recount of sms votes was undertaken after it emerged that large volumes of sms votes that were sent before the cutoff date arrived later, and were not counted.

The title will now be shared between Davids and fellow finalist Jason Hartman. The final count shows Hartman beating Davids by a whopping 200,000 votes, with 1.3 million total votes compared to Davids’ 1.1million.

So far, it has still not established where exactly the fault or system failure that delayed the sms votes occurred. At the time of publication, ITNewsAfrica.com had not yet received e-mail responses to queries from MNET or the network operators that were contacted.

It is also still unclear whether Alexander Forbes, who was responsible for auditing the voting results, would make a statement.

It is also unclear how the prize money and recording agreements would be split or settled between the two winners.